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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Ride report: going east, through the fog.

I haven't posted ride reports in a long time. One of the main reason is winter-related: in winter I find it too cumbersome to take pictures while going for a ride. Instead of just pulling the camera out of the back pocket of your jersey and snapping a shot while riding, you have to stop, take off your gloves, open the zipper, take the picture, stow away camera, put on gloves. And without pictures ride reports tend to be rather dull. Well, Montreal has been experiencing record temperatures of well over 20 degrees (and that's Celsius, not Fahrenheit!) and therefore I've been riding a lot and I've taken pictures.

Saturday started out somewhat bad: I had woken up at 5:30 but it was all foggy. The fog -- and the low temperatures -- didn't go away but at about 9 I got going anyway. After having ridden around the western half of the Ile de Montréal a couple of times now, this time I wanted to head out east. There is bike infrastructure going along the southern shore of the island all the way to its tip but from experience I knew that huge proportions of it are badly designed, badly maintained, or sometimes both. Therefore I took the easiest possible way: turn right onto Notre-Dame and keep going and going and going. Riding on Notre-Dame was alright, despite it being a major thoroughfare with up to 8 lanes. On a Saturday morning traffic was light and with one exception cars passed me with care.

Foggy Notre-Dame

The fog didn't only accumulate on my clothing but also on my glasses, making them mostly useless.

Near the tip of the island I then switched over to Sherbrooke and a bike path in reasonably good shape.

Once the path moved away from the road, however, it was still too snowy and icy to be usable. Therefore I followed Boulevard Gouin all the way to the point where I had to turn south to cut across the island into downtown. Before that, though, I came across the newly constructed path on the A25 bridge---which unfortunately was still closed.

After a quick stop to pick up a tool at ABC Cycles I then took a gratuitous detour up Mont Royal, now fully in the lovely spring sun. Total distance was about 70 km. Report from Sunday's ride will follow shortly.

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